Tuesday, 3 November 2015

Wibbsey and Company

Here's a flashback to 2011, and a few pages from my diary, when we were recording one of my Doctor Who stories in Soho for Audiogo.

*

It’s the first day of summer. My third summer
that’s seen me make little trips to London for these days of recording. The
scripts start on January the first – and I can’t believe we’re here already. I
had a night in the Academy hotel and an evening at the Rising Sun with Jim,
Swyrie, Blair, Ian – the fellas from the Urbane Squalor discussion group.
Wednesday morning I’ve got a red wine headache and the sun is out. I stop for
honey and yoghurt and coffee – and then a bacon sandwich in Soho.

I’m nervous – because of my arguments with
Michael over the scripts these past few months. My almost throwing in the towel
several times. My feeling that the scripts were being taken off me.

And I’m nervous because today’s episode riffs
shamelessly off Nicholas and Alexandra, that great film. Tom’s being asked to
reprise Rasputin. He has pages of dialogue with himself. It’s going to be
demanding in all sorts of ways. I’ve called my monsters the Skishtari – and I
can just see that’s going to play havoc with a cast Sue Jameson laughingly
calls ‘the geriatric Doctor and his geriatric friends’.

At five to nine I head up to the top floor of
Fitzroy Post.

Everyone’s there. Together again…

Michael hands me a cast list and the first thing
I find is they’ve got Michael Jayston to play the Tsar again. Now I’m even more
nervous.

*

‘Ahh, Michael’s here now, so everything is all
right! All is well!’

It’s about 3pm and Tom’s tired. Today we’ve kept
him later than his usual knock-off time. He’s never worked later than two in
the afternoon for years. Today we’re doing ‘Tsar Wars’, and it’s got funny
complications to do with a large cast, and doubling of roles.

Tom’s happy because his old pal Michael Jayston
turns up on time. They exchange huge actorly roars when he comes into the
studio to do his stint as the robot Tsar. The scene is a dinner party of
aristocratic androids, and speech-making and tense exchanges. Between takes the
actors gossip and reminisce and crack up with laughter. The small studio’s been
full all day, and there’s been a lot of laughter.

‘That Michael Sheen is extraordinary,’ says Tom.
They’re talking about who’s any good these days. ‘He was in that Kenneth
Williams thing. I don’t know why they did a film about a vicious little pouf like
him. Never had a good word to say about anyone.’

The day is filled with Tom’s favourite sayings:
‘Fuck a duck!’ when he’s made a mistake. Calling, ‘Lyndsey!’ when he can’t find
the right page, and Lyndsey has to run from the control room into the studio to
help him, calmly, efficiently. Today everyone’s losing their pages and she
bursts in, crying out: ‘What are you DOING with them all?’

Other Bakerisms… ‘Misplaced fucking commas. Our
writer’s translating from the fucking Albanian again.’ ‘Hey ho.’ ‘I’ll start again. I must be
too fucking nervous again, eh!’ And the usual raft of sexist gibes and tales.
‘Crawl? I can crawl! On all fours I’m another man altogether! You should see,
Mrs Wibbs!’

Everyone’s calling Sue Mrs Wibbs these days.
It’s become her name. She reminds us all of my idea from last year – T shirts
for all that read, ‘What Would Mrs Wibbsey do?’

Michael Jayston’s looking older than I expect,
and like a long-term smoker. He’s craggy and charming. Preparing to record, he
flexes his mouth, and his whole face in this amazing way – these very precise
grimaces. His voice is immense and wonderfully deep. In scenes with the Doctor,
even Tom’s voice sounds high and thin next to his.

‘I’ve realized it’s 41 years since we last
worked together, Tom.’

‘And never again since!’

‘There’s a reason for that. I’ve just
remembered.’

‘Yes! And that’s just like how no one ever
invites me to their homes twice, too!’

‘RUBBISH, Tom,’ snaps Michael. ‘That’s NOT
true!’

I’ve never seen Tom put right like this before.
It’s done with such drollery, though. Drollery in all the hilarity.

‘Jesus Christ, Tom’s ACTING!’ gasps Kate at one
point. He’s in a scene in a cell with the physician, Boolin. Simon Shepherd
underplays Boolin – he’s mild and calming and better than we all expect,
somehow. He’s a still point in all the raving and campery that goes on today.
In a scene with him, Tom is starting to sound naturalistic. He’s underplaying
himself and letting the Doctor think on his feet and not just show off. The
scene finishes with him telling the robot that he’s wonderful – and just then I
realise I’ve nicked this from Tom’s scene in State of Decay, when he says the
same to Romana.

Then, as if he was straying too close to taking
any of it seriously, he tells us about going to the hospice to see Nick
Courtney on his death bed. ‘Well, I went in and I thought he was already dead.
Then he let out this groan, and so I moved closer and I said: ‘Nick, Nick,
after a long and eventful and wonderful life such as you’ve lived, and after
everything you’ve seen and done, would you say, at the end, that you’re a tits
or arse man?’ And there was a long, long pause. And then, with his dying
breath, the Brigadier said: ‘Tits! No, arse! No, both, I think!’ And then he
expired.’

I love these long, complicated days, and our
sitting in the foyer with the wide windows over Soho – and there’s the Telecom
tower to the north. Sue Jameson has become fond of me, I think, and I of her –
she hugs me and ushers me to sit down with her, am I comfortable, can we move
some of this stuff out the way? Perhaps she thinks I’m shy or seeming on the
sidelines? I don’t feel on the sidelines, but my role is different to anyone’s.
It’s hard to explain. But she looks after me and asks about Fester, who was ill
last summer, and tells me she loves ‘Never the Bride’, and has a new grandchild
on the way, and tells me about our mutual friend Jo Tope in her show in New
York, and wants to hear about me going freelance.

Three years of these days and these adventures –
this is our episode 11 – it feels like friendships are coming about. We’re
definitely a team.

Sue introduces me to Simon Shepherd, also
sitting on the settee. We’ve not had time to do that yet – everyone’s been
diving into pastrami sandwiches and crawfish salads. I’m trying to squeeze a
bit more juice out of Wibbs’ rather hard lime for her. Simon (whom Kate calls
acting royalty in the making) is very pleased to be here – and in three
episodes under different guises, no less. He and Sue both want to know why I’m
not writing for the TV show. I tell them my sad little tale of Piers Wengers
asking my agent for my storylines and pitches, and the reply that never came
back…

When he gets tired or restless Tom sighs,
‘Hey-ho!’ and you have to take it for a danger sign. Mostly he’s having fun and
doubling up as Rasputin, who in this story has become an occasionally Chinese
Nazi doctor, for some reason. Michael feeds the other lines in these doubler
scenes, and it’s obviously made his year to do so.

There are boys – actors in their twenties –
dashing about and being robots and gruff revolutionaries. All are excited and
enthralled by the old folks acting up, acting their hearts out. They nip out
for advert castings in theatres at lunchtime. A strawberry blonde who played
our snaky villain announces with dismay that Macdonalds asked to see him
topless.

It’s five before we finish. There’s a plan to
spill next door into the Bricklayer’s Arms. I text my pal Nick to tell him of a
change of venue for our 5pm drink – to watch his face when he walks in and sees
this strange gang. But that’s maybe unfair – he’s shy, we were to have a quiet
forty minutes’ chat together. But I can’t resist. I love turning round in that
sunny, wooden, tiny bar and he’s walking in and seeing Mrs Wibbsey, and there’s
the Valeyard at the bar, turning to welcome him, saying, ‘Nick! What will you
have to drink?’

Michael Jayston was very nice to me – very
complimentary about the script. I was dreading the worst over my cribbed
Russian revolution stuff. But he’s keen to compliment me and to say what fun
it’s all been. ‘He’s heaven, just heaven,’ Kate says, of working with him, and
I can see why. He came in and was faultless. Then he was saying, ‘I’m the Doctor
as well! People don’t always realise this, but I’m the Doctor, too! I’m the
evil Doctor when he gets very old! I’m going to tell Tom!’

But Tom has slipped off. He put on his Eric
Morecambe coat and picked up his paper bag. He stopped so I could have a
picture taken with him and then he waved us goodbye again. ‘Yes, I know Michael
Jayston wants me to come to the pub. But I can’t. Thirty years ago I’d go to
the Bricklayers’ arms with him on a Wednesday afternoon, and I’d never get home
until the following Tuesday. No – I’m off right now! Goodbye..! Goodbye…!’